Quinnipiac Seeking Cadavers For New Medical School

Increase In Body Donations Attributed To Internet, Down Economy

March 25, 2013|By WILLIAM WEIR, bweir@courant.com, The Hartford Courant

Any new medical school faces challenges, not the least of which is collecting enough dead bodies to train its students.

But thanks to the Internet and a down economy, that task is getting easier.

For all the advances in medical training, there's still no substitute for the human cadaver. And with Quinnipiac University's new medical school, the Frank H. Netter MD School of Medicine, scheduled to begin classes in the fall, educators there are seeking donations.

Initially, Casso said, Quinnipiac will buy bodies from Albany Medical Center. By August, the school will have 26 cadavers, purchased for $3,000 apiece, including transportation. Over the next year or so, Casso said, he will be busy getting the word out about the body donation program and building a base of donors.

Casso said body donations have been on the rise for some time.

"Donations are actually up because people are realizing that there's a need for it and the Internet has supplied a lot of opportunity to learn more about it," he said. Also, he said, donating bodies to medical schools is a "more affordable alternative for many families."

"Cremation prices are up to $1,000 to $4,000,depending on where you do it," he said. Traditional burial is even more expensive. "There's embalming if there's a viewing, then there's charges for dressing, hairdressing. It can get kind of pricey."

With donating a body to a medical school, though, all expenses of cremation, paperwork, filing the death certificate and returning the cremains are paid for by the school in most cases.

But mainly, Casso said, people are most likely to do it as a way to contribute to science.

"There's a certain number who do it for economic reasons, but I think most do it because they realize the value of such a donation," he said.

Changing Attitudes

National figures for body donations are hard to come by, but Casso said that when he began running the human anatomy program at the University of Connecticut 20 years ago, they would get about 35 bodies a year. By the time he left UConn for Quinnipiac last year, the typical number of donations was closer to 60 per year.

"It's definitely more mainstream than it's ever been," he said.

Twenty years ago, Casso said, donations came largely from family members of people in the medical field who were aware of the scientific value of a cadaver.

Those who sign up as donors will receive a laminated identification card with the information that they wish to donate their body. When the donor dies, family members contact the body donation program. The school arranges to retrieve the body and store it until it is used for educational purposes.

Our attitudes about what to do with the remains of bodies has changed over time. Joshua Slocum, executive director of the Funeral Consumers Alliance, notes that the first cremation in the U.S. was in 1872 – "and that sparked a full-on riot." Even by the early 1960s, cremation accounted for only 2 percent of body disposals in the U.S. Today, he said, the national rate is about 40 percent and as much as 70 percent in some states.

Slocum said funeral costs in the thousands of dollars have increasingly been a factor in the decision to donate a body.

"From what I can gather anecdotally, [body donations] are going up because of the cost of funerals," he said. "Figuring out what to do with ourselves after death, these things are emotionally important decisions, but they're also financial decisions and no good comes from not talking about it."

Donating a body to science does not qualify for a tax write-off; an H&R Block spokeswoman explained that since bodies can't be sold, they have no monetary value. (Organizations can charge for services such as shipping and handling.)

As at most medical schools, the bodies will be used at Quinnipiac for gross anatomy courses.

The body donation program at the new medical school, on Quinnipiac's North Haven campus, will be the third one in the state; the other two are at UConn and Yale University.

The body donation program at Yale has been around for decades and is well-established. Yale gets 65 to 70 bodies a year.

"Generally, the donors themselves are the ones that call us and already know what they want to do," said Philip Lapre, who runs the body donation program at Yale. "These are well-informed people. We don't advertise, and we don't publicize this in any way, so they've definitely looked into this."

Officials at the body donation programs at UConn and Yale say that potential donors and their families often want assurance that the body won't go anywhere outside the university.